The Reluctant Communist: My Desertion Court-Martial and Forty-Year Imprisonment in North Korea

About this book

In January of 1965 twenty-four-year-old U.S. Army sergeant Charles Robert Jenkins abandoned his post in South Korea walked across the DMZ and surrendered to communist North Korean soldiers standing sentry along the worlds most heavily militarized border. He believed his action would get him back to the States and a short jail sentence. Instead he found himself in another sort of prison where for forty years he suffered under one of the most brutal and repressive regimes the world has known. This fast-paced harrowing tale told plainly and simply by Jenkins (with journalist Jim Frederick) takes the reader behind the North Korean curtain and reveals the inner workings of its isolated society while offering a powerful testament to the human spirit.